


four portraits from the royal house of ida

by historymiss



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:54:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25108786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: 'Ianthe knows she’s a monster almost as soon as she’s born.'More Third House feelings, because I love these horrible preps.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	four portraits from the royal house of ida

_A group portrait of the royal family of Ida, painted shortly after the birth of their twin daughters. The Queen is sitting, a baby on each arm. One of them is healthy, cherubic, blonde curls already beginning to crown her head and eyes bright as amethysts. The other is sickly and pale, and her eyes are the colour of a faded bruise. The babies both fist their hands in the filmy silk of their mothers’ robe, and regard the viewer with identical expressions of indifference. They wear matching embroidered linen gowns and necklaces made from tiny, pearly teeth._

_The Queen of Ida is drawn and pale and her eyes are shadowed. The King stands behind her. His hand, too, clutches at her robe. A gold plaque screwed to the bottom of the frame reads ‘amor edax rerum’._

Ianthe knows she’s a monster almost as soon as she’s born. She isn’t stupid: she can tell, when others look at her, even as a little girl, that she is the ugly twin, the spare only kept for the sake of having a matched set. It was her that nearly killed their mother, attempted matricide and regicide all rolled into one. It’s her that can take the taste of blood fizzing on her tongue and make all their toys dance on red strings of gore.

They are only useful together, the shining sister and her shadow. Ianthe is more powerful one, at least in terms of necromancy, but from birth she is under no illusions as to which of them everyone likes.

_The Crown Princess of Ida sits on a swing suspended at the very top of its arc, her feet swung out with a joyful kick and her head thrown back with laughter. Her hair streams behind her like sunlit clouds, and her teeth, fully visible, are stained with red. Below her, the Princess of Ida lays on a picnic blanket, reading. Her face is drawn in concentration, or perhaps sadness, and her hands are bloody. A body, chest cracked open to the elements, lays at her side._

_An inscription on the reverse reads: ‘Coronabeth and Ianthe. Commissioned with love by the King and Queen, on the occasion of their thirteenth birthday.’_

They argue all the time, little bites and nips that chip away at each other only to restore their own power. 

“Cor, it must be deliciously refreshing to have not a single thought in your head. Tell me what it’s like, won’t you?”

“Oh, Anthy, it’s so lucky that you have a sense of humour considering… everything else.”

“I could never rely on my looks like you do, darling, that’s for certain.”

“I just _couldn’t_ spend hours cooped up with books like you, I simply have to get out there! But then, everyone knows that there’s no point in bothering you for parties, don’t they?”

“Certainly, Cor, it isn’t like any of those friends seem to do anything other than have their little parties with you.”

(Later, it’s what they will both miss most, in the silence: the barbs, and the blood in the water)

_A young man stares out from an ornate golden frame. His hair is swept up into a pompadour, a few strands artfully out of place to give the impression of recent exercise. His uniform is pressed, starched and pinned so that his shoulders seem straight and broad, his waist impossibly trim. His mouth is set in a cruel little moue, like the aftermath of a kiss he didn’t particularly enjoy._

_The sword at his hip and the jewelled skull pinned to his breast mark him as the Cavalier Primary for the House of Ida. Someone has carefully scratched out his name from the bottom of the frame._

“You’re doing it for her.”

Ianthe looks up, sharply, from the brooches that she’s laying on Coronabeth’s eyes like golden coins. Naberius, fourteen years old and approaching peak adolescent smugness, leans against the doorframe.

“I can see you looking at the effects a second before Corona does. It’s taken me a while to be sure, but now I know it. You’re covering for your sister.”

Ianthe’s mouth narrows, her lips like a gash in her face.

“Corona’s right here, _Naberius_.”

“And she’s totally normal, so what is she going to do?” He advances towards them, boots squeaking on the nursery floor. Coronabeth remains unmoving, though Ianthe can see the flicker as her eyes dart under the goldwork covering them. 

“I know you, and I can ruin you.” His mouth is twisted in a kind of delight, and he’s too absorbed in his own triumph to notice Coronabeth’s movements until she jabs the pin of one of the brooches, hard, into his upper leg. Naberius yelps and clamps his hand over the wound, blood blooming on the stretched white of his breeches.

“And who do you think they’ll believe?” she hisses, and in that moment, she sounds exactly like her sister, or maybe her sister has always sounded like her. “Some jumped up little cav from a minor branch, or the Princesses of Ida?”

Ianthe hooks her fingers, and Naberius grits his teeth against the sick feeling of his blood straining to burst out of his skin.

_The Princesses of Ida sit against a background the deep, angry purple of a bruise. They are wearing identical, elaborate silk dresses, formal elbow-length white gloves and golden tiaras surmounted with delicate filigree skulls. They are turned towards each other, knees touching, and they are holding hands. They have similar expressions: wary, like a wild animal, as if they might bolt from the frame at any second._

_You can only distinguish Coronabeth from Ianthe by the colour of her eyes, and the fact that in her free hand, Coronabeth carries a bloody, glistening heart, while Ianthe holds a tongue rolled neatly in her palm._

_The inscription reads, The Princesses Depart to Canaan House._

_The whole portrait, from the top to the bottom of the frame, is draped in black._


End file.
